Franciscus Verellen

An historian of medieval China, Franciscus Verellen is a professor in the History of Daoism and former Director (2004-2014) of the Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient. He currently serves as head of the EFEO Hong Kong Center.

Verellen has published widely in the fields of regional cultural history and Daoism, including The Taoist canon: A historical companion to the Daozang, 3 volumes, edited with Kristofer Schipper, The University of Chicago Press, 2004 (Association of American Publishers 2005 Award for Excellence in Professional and Scholarly Publishing, American Academy of Religion 2007 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion). His new book Imperiled Destinies: The Daoist Quest for Deliverance in Medieval China will appear at the Harvard University Press in spring 2019.

After doctoral studies at Oxford and Paris, Franciscus Verellen taught at Columbia University, New York, and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris. He held visiting appointments at Princeton University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Alumnus Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Universities of Munich, Oxford, and Heidelberg, and fellow-in-residence at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in Wassenaar, Franciscus Verellen was Stewart Lecturer in the Humanities at Princeton University in 2005, and member and Edwin C. and Elisabeth A. Whitehead Fellow in the School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, in 2009-2010. He was a distinguished adjunct researcher at Renmin University, Beijing, in 2010-2012.

Since 2014, Franciscus Verellen is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, adjunct professor in the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and an honorary research fellow of the Jao Tsung-I Petite Ecole, The University of Hong Kong.

Franciscus Verellen was elected a member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, Institut de France, in 2008. He is a knight of the French Legion of Honour, an officer of the order Palmes Académiques, and an officer of the Royal Order of Cambodia.